Author: Ty Dunitz

There sure has been a whole lotta tweetin’ goin’ on in the last few years, and today marks the completion of the fifth cycle around the Sun sine the first tweet done been twut. As of now, every eight days, one billion tweets are siphoned through the internet’s tubes – and here I remember a time when we at Techi would remark wide-eyed on a tweet milestone of a couple billion. I guess we’ll just report on the trillions from here on out. In order to get everyone all bleary-eyed about the 140-character messages that touch them most, Twitter has provided a video of people of all walks of life – especially the walk…

We’re willing to bet you’ve never seen a tech toy meet its end with such beauty. Remember in Jet Li’s Hero, where everyone kind of pirouetted all pretty-like when they died? This is like that, but with, like, iPads and bullets and stuff….

If there’s one thing the Kinect is good for, it’s facilitating interesting and downright clever hacks. Obviously. If you thought I was going to say ‘gaming’, you’re not a gamer. In any case, check this out. London Hackspace has developed what they’ve dubbed the Evil Genius Simulator – a device which uses a Kinect to monitor the motions of the aspiring genius’ hands. The higher they’re raised (ideally accompanied by maniacal laughter) the more lightning that jumps between two Tesla coils set up behind it all. This is nothing if not a lesson in basdassery. I dunno how comfortable I’d feel turning…

In the age of the pervasion of mobile devices, it would seem traditional wrist-mounted chronometers have fallen by the wayside. Citizens itching for the time tend to check their phones more than their watches, and even iPod Nano wrist straps aren’t catching on like the wildfire one would have expected. So the big question is this: what’s a wrist for, now that the mobile scene has laid claim to time itself? Core77 asked Lunchbreath this very question, and he had a few ideas of his own. I fully expect for mobile devices to corner the market on some of these concepts eventually, too. Come to think of it,…

I believe it was poet William Smith who once quipped ‘you can’t stop the bum rush’. Then, I believe, he invited us to the wild, wild west. The bum rush (a term the definition of which I have yet to truly divine) in question here is oft-noted iPhone hacker and developer Comex, who has (perhaps predictably) already jailbroken the iPad 2. You might remember Comex from such helpful jailbreaks as JailbreakMe and Spirit – then again, as figures so far suggest 70% of all iPad 2 buyers are first-timers, maybe you mightn’t. Anyway, no word on when the hack will be released into the wilds, but while you wait, here’s…

Steve must’ve completely lost it. Not content to leave the z axis uninsulted, it would appear Jobs & Friends are still pursuing ever-slimmer, nigh-paper-thin iDevices, to the point of near lunacy. Check out this new patent, which details the construction of a new headphone jack design which would allow the use of traditional headphones in devices thinner than the adapter itself. Sorcery? Not quite – in all variants of the design, the headphone jack is only partially complete. In one version, a fleible material covers the exposed side of the jack, while in another, two small doors open to…

Straight outta the ‘Things You Probably Don’t Care To Know’ department comes Mark Zuckerberg’s new dog, Beast. Now, you might think this isn’t Techi material, but let’s get one thing crystal clear, here: this dog is immeasurably adorable, and if there is one axiom of the universe, it’s that cute things run the internet. That all eight-week-old Pulis (a particular breed of sheepdog) are more or less precisely this cute is completely besides the point, here. I guess Zuck isn’t just a hoodie-clad anti-privacy golem after all. He has a heart – or at least a wise PR team. Obviously, you want to smother…

It’s only a matter of time before the iPad erases print entirely. The Federal Aviation Administration has granted early approval for the use of iPads in airplane cockpits – meaning before long, we could see the end entirely of paper maps and charts aboard planes. It would seem commercial airlines can’t wait to hop abourd the iPad bandwagon …plane… whatever, with none other than Delta already applying for approval to test the iPad (as well as other tablets) aboard its flights. The iPad would be a significant change for airlines, as current-gen aviation computers can weigh almost twenty pounds….

Apparently the iPhone 4 was simply too much awesome. The world wasn’t ready. Or maybe, Apple wasn’t. Whatever the case, Taiwan’s Economic Daily News is reporting that Apple’s heading back to aluminum (instead of glass) for the iPhone 5, championing a design that harkens back to the bog-standard iPod Touch. The problem is probably more about the painting and scratching fiascos the iPhone 4′s been experiencing and much less about the world’s level of preparedness, but I for one am sad to see the new iPhone design go so soon (if the rumour is first to be trusted at all). The iPhone 4 was following a rather…

Just try and tell us tech doesn’t go hand-in-hand with art (you can’t). And while technology shrinks, so too does the art inspired by it. Take American artist Yuri Zupancic, for example, who has taken to painting miniature masterpieces onto discarded microchips using brushes made of his own eyelashes (wow). Rarely measuring in at even a full inch, Yuri’s works can hardly be appreciated for what they really are through photographs. Suffice it to say that these are really, really, impressively small. As for subject matter, Yuri is eclectic. “I seek poetic images which raise questions and strike…